Motorbiking in Asia forum

I will be arriving into Hanoi in 3 weeks time and really want to spend a few days riding a bike between Sapa - Ha Giang province and Dong Van (if possible!)

My problems;

1) I'm on my own and have little experiance of riding bikes, with the exception of having (what I believe to be though I cant be sure...) a scooter for a month in Thailand 4 years ago. What are my chances?!

2) I understand the laws are now changing on riding bikes in Vietnam. Any certainties?

3) License, insurance requirements, government permit and guide? Repercussions of having none of these?

I appreciate there are a lot of questions here but if anyone has any recent experiance with this I would love to hear from you.

Finally if anyone is interesting in hooking up to do something like this, please drop me a line.

This site rocks BTW... where has it been all my life :)